hello everyone i'm tina shelke and i'm here today with chris washington who is the lead organizational change manager here at glidefast chris tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be in the realm and in the world of organizational change thank you tina hi everyone chris washington i got into organizational change about 25 years ago i have an hr and a sales background and i did a lot of work with my hr team as i was being groomed in corporate america and decided to get into facilitating training and all of those type of different activities and as i was getting more and more comfortable and feeling confident in that i branched into organizational change management where i've become certified in the pro side methodology and i have been doing this now for more than 20 plus years so i have been doing this role for quite a while and how i got to glide fast is i was recruited in from an outside source brought into the organization and now we are in the process of trying to stand up a center of excellence for organizational change management tina how did you get here oh that's a great question one i have a great friend chris washington who invited me to join glidefast um but really how i got into the world of org change is um i was leading a lot of change and my career was always about innovation and change even though i didn't necessarily recognize it but as i started my career gosh more than 30 years ago that's scary right chris you and i are dinosaurs in our careers but we we keep up anyway i went about leading change right introducing and leading change and sometimes it went really well and sometimes it didn't go so well sometimes it felt like gosh i had a an old supervisor a vp of manufacturing um and he said tina how does it feel pushing rope so some projects were you know but generally things went in the wind column for me i was tenacious and a little competitive and i had a lot of drive and desire and that thing that you always talk about that want to but when i was leading teams usually it felt really exciting people get on board with the change um they learn and create the new systems and processes that we needed to be successful and they brought their teams on board other times it felt like um i was threatening the darn work myself right just to get the work done and sometimes even after implementing a significant change i'd show up a couple weeks later to check on things and see how they were going and it was like change never visited this place so um it was oh back in 2012 for me so i led innovation projects and um change and worked with customer integration in large corporations but i think it was 2011. i went and got my pro size certification and boy did that make a difference for me i learned that you know landing in the win column was great but it was best when people were just as excited about the results as i was and that's good that's good yeah but the real turning point for me chris and i don't know how it landed for you the turning point for me that sealed the deal and this is what i need and want to be doing for companies for organizations for myself was when i learned that it really wasn't about them resisting that was not the problem it was what i was doing as a leader how i was influencing the change i it was about me when it failed and there was resistance yes yes yeah that was a tough you know humble moment yep but you're preaching to the choir that is perfect i i was certified with my prosai a year before you in 2010 and i went out to colorado and got my certification and all that now like you said i have more wins in the win column than when i initially started and i think what viewers can take from this is it takes a while to go through that change curve even for the professionals like us look at all the learnings we had to go through that we uncovered as we were going through and then learning and then applying that practical knowledge to help other organizations go through their change curve right yeah transformation is no joke it's tough it's tough for people um so chris let's just give a quick definition of what change management is organizational change management totally different than like itil change management right correct correct management let's let's talk about that yes change management is the process of moving people through process and into a new technology other ways people say it is it is the human side of change okay it's really that simple you have to be able to see if an organization can go through change and if they have the capability to make it through the change because as you and i both know tina we have those touch points a lot of people talk about the technical piece of the change but they always always forget about the people side and you and i both know the people side is probably the most important is that what your experience has been yeah yeah it's like people want to build this really fast cool state-of-the-art modern machine right right they're so proud of what they build and they can build something beautiful and perfect works like a charm the trouble is if people don't adopt those changes or adopt that new technology that new machine that they built it's rather useless right if people learn or don't learn right if people don't learn how to use that new thing that you created correct you're not going to get a return on your investments and if they don't dependably use it and continue to grow that beautiful new technology that you created to transform your organization they don't use that far into the future and continue to grow it and sustain it yeah you have lost all the potential for those future earnings um so yeah i think to boil it down sum it up it's a leadership discipline yes leaders need to get on board and if you touch the words right out of my mouth you don't need to change you got you got org change wrong already right second thing is it's about adoption right people need to get on board um it's about desire people need to want to make the changes they need to have the information they need to make a choice am i going or not going along with this change and not everybody's going to go what do we do about that chris well not everybody's going to go at the same time right because we are human and we do not like change as humans and i always when i was facilitating change training classes i used to tell people all the time let's go back all the way to cavemen all right they never left their cave their primary cave we don't like to change and i'll put peel it back and make it even more personal how many of us ever change our rooms around in our house this couch it's been here forever i don't move it we don't change even the change people resist it at times so we have to understand what people are going through when they're going to adopt and we have to realize that not everyone is going to change at the same speed that is the biggest thing for leaders managers those type of folks to understand that not everybody's going to get there at the same time right tina oh i so agree the other thing that comes up for me here around this is that each individual has a different or maybe within groups different intrinsic motivations to choose whether or not to make the change and whether or not to make the change right now right so yeah what's really cool is that you and i have great tools and techniques to help organizations identify what's working in their favor to help move and influence change forward but we also help them understand those barriers to change that exist um in their culture in subcultures in structures and processes and policies throughout their organization that might create some resistance and even in individuals so yeah it's fun to be able to partner with organizations and shine some light on the environment yeah that you're working in the kind of change i got a question for you yeah so now that we're here at glidefast how do you think it would be most helpful for us to help do some internal education for our pre-sale team our engagement managers all the people that we work with internally how do you think we can best help them oh my gosh i think we need to have some articles in no space right i think we need to have more conversations like this that our team can listen to and engage with so maybe we can do like a mindset minute a couple three minutes some things right right to talk about a tool or technique that organizational change uses or maybe even an outcome of organizational change you know we do these things and here's the result this is what you get at the end of it perhaps we can do some share the wealth training um and certainly i know for me every time i've engaged with a new client a new engagement manager new technical consultants new business process consultants as we engage with them they're starting to pick up cues about when do we need to get org change involved at glaciers so they're starting to open up those opportunities for our clients and for their own teams what are some hallmark indicators that hey you might want to think about bringing on some more change professionals to help you no that's a great question one of the things that i see as one of the things that people can pick up on is when they're talking to a green grass client or an existing client pick up on some of the cues of what they're saying or what they're not saying such as hey we had you guys in here before servicenow and but people didn't take it on as much as quickly as we thought that's an indicator that people are slow to change the other thing is when you have a chief executive officer or a chief information officer that's all gung-ho but the communication hasn't moved through the organization that he or she is ready for change that is an indicator that you may want to bring in tina or myself we can help you formulate some communications and help educate them on where their organization is currently and then help them understand what they're asking their organization to do when they go through that transition or transformation oh my goodness yes you know i think about it and um little things that come up in projects when they're underway so in the beginning it is you know like before we get started if some somebody is like keen enough to the idea of bringing in org change right from the beginning they're concerned about how changes have gone for them in the past at their organization you know ooh it was tough to get everybody on board oh i got a lot of feedback that we didn't communicate enough um oh my gosh you know this never really took off before there was a change like this it never really took off or you know what i bring this topic up it's a change we need to make our other systems are outdated and they're not going to be supported anymore and we chose servicenow now we got to get it done right correct and people are resistant to that idea they they they're kind of holding on to what they know and love and what got them to be successful to this point exactly so all of those in the beginning are are good indicators but when a project's underway what i see as you know like the hallmark signals hey let's talk to an org change manager right that would be when people are do creating workarounds right like the system's in place and nobody's using it they're still reverting back to old systems or excel documents or other ways of working around the system instead of in the system i think another one is when morale really tanks and people are overwhelmed oh yes they're thin that's key there tina yes we've never seen morale drop heavily another time is when um leaders are sensing people aren't trained enough they've had a whole bunch of training but they're still not doing it and doing it right rarely have i uncovered that it's truly a training issue at that point um it seems to be something else that's getting in the way so yeah or perhaps um they're concerned because the changes that they're going to make in it with servicenow is going to touch every employee in their organization and they don't know how to prepare their organization for that and they know it's a big deal so yeah those are some of those little harm hallmark indicators yes yes i i will agree with you on all of that um in case you guys can't tell tina and i have had many conversations like this over the years and it's just a telltale sign that organizational change management when we got into it many many years ago was in its infancy and now it is in its transition state as a profession also so it is going through its own uh machinations and because we're working agile now we're working in waterfall and sometimes you can see that in a lot of different projects but as we all know here we work in the agile methodology and we can fit right into that by working with the the delivery teams and when they're going for solutions building out stories all of those activities tina and i can sit in at that time and what that does is it allows us to help the team weave the narrative and the story as we go through and generate communications we build out change training and solution training but also helping people you heard tina say this earlier adopt to the new solution because as people are selling service now we want them to use what we sold them okay so i think next time when we get together tina i think we'll drive home on some of the other finer points of organizational change management and the process that we follow here at glide fast that sounds great next time let's get into the people process and technology i think that's a great queue up for the next time we get together hey what's your final thought what do you want people to take away from this talk today i want people to know that we are here to help them solve their concerns with adoption usage when they're working with a client and i also want them to take away that tina and i are here to support and help and we are available as business partners yeah we're really thank you my final thought is absolutely we want to partner with you we want to partner with our clients and we want to ensure that leaders are giving people what they need no more no less but what they need to make the decision to change and be successful with that change so that if you have any comments or feedback for us let us know drop it in those comments and we'll talk with you again soon thank you thanks for joining us this episode of glide chat thanks guys [Music] you